MORGANTOWN — A West Virginia University College of Law professor recently received the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Grant.
The Fulbright Scholar Program awarded the grant to Matthew Titolo for the spring 2019 semester.
Titolo said the grant is a great opportunity for him to work with European scholars and deepen his knowledge of international law.
Matthew Titolo
| WVU College of Law site
"I also hope that I can use my Fulbright experience to help WVU build more collaborative working relationships with colleagues across the Atlantic in the coming years," Titolo told the West Virginia Record. "My Fulbright in Spain and the working relationships I will make there will help enrich my teaching and scholarship when I return to WVU. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity."
Titolo said he expects to learn a lot from his new students and colleagues at the University de La Laguna in Spain—where he'll be teaching for seven months. He and his family will return to Morgantown in July.
"I will be lecturing throughout the semester and teaching weekly class sessions on international private and public law," Titolo said. "It will be interesting to explore cutting-edge legal issues with an international group of students and colleagues and to discuss my work on the intersection of public and private law."
Titolo will also lecture on his forthcoming book "Privatization and Its Discontents: Infrastructure, Law and American Democracy." The book will be published by Cambridge University Press.
"Infrastructure and privatization have both become hot topics in recent years," Titolo said. "In the book, I provide a historical account of America's public-private system for developing infrastructure: everything from roads and bridges to the Internet."
Titolo said he moves from the chartered companies in the Colonial era and the early conflict over "public improvements" to the large public transit systems and other infrastructure projects of the 20th century.
"At each stage, Americans have debated the proper degree of democratic control over infrastructure," Titolo said.
Titolo began teaching at WVU College of Law in 2009. Before that, he practiced commercial litigation at a large firm in California. He studied law at the University of California (UCLA) at Berkeley in 2005 and completed a doctorate in English Literature in 2001. He earned a master's from the University of Texas and a bachelor's from Baruch College—both in English Literature.
While at UCLA, he was also editor-in-chief of the Berkeley Business Law Journal and the associate editor of the California Law Review.
The Fulbright Scholar Program's goal is to improve intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy and intercultural competence between the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge and skills.
